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Information Shared by Tony Burfield of www.cropwatch.org

Referring to standard trade Certificates of Naturalness for Essential Oils might be useful here. The wording I use to certify essential oils for the trade as natural in my professional capacity usually goes something along these lines...(this may not be the latest version but it will serve to illustrate the point):

"Whatever Oil from Whatever country ....(fill in as appropriate)....
Meets the requirement for a flavour labelled natural under CFR 101.22(A)3 and meets the requirements of the natural flavour/natural flavouring substances labelled in according with the regulations originally promulgated under EEC Council Regulation No 88/388 dated 22.6.1988 Article 9.2, and the subsequent amendments thereof. The product also meets the conditions for fragrance ingredients, the definitions being set out under ISO 9325 (1997) and so meets requirements for Natural Cosmetics under guidelines proposed by the Committee of Experts on Cosmetic Products 2000. The product or all the ingredients contained in the product have been obtained by suitable physical processes, or enzymic processes , or micro-biological processes or traditional processes of food preparation from plant-derived or animal-derived raw materials."

There is a section on the naturalness certificate following the above statement allowing for the percentage of any added ingredients to be declared (i.e. anti-oxidants). For clarity I should also point out that the term 'animal-derived raw materials' relates to commodities such as insect products like 'lac' and not animal products such as ambergris, civet, musk, castoreum etc. - which I will not deal with on moral & ethical grounds.

The ISO 9325 (1997) Aromatic Raw Materials - Vocabulary provides various definitions of essential oils under section 3.1 Essential oils; 3.2 Essential oils obtained without significant changes to composition (e.g. rectified oils); 3.3 Essential oils obtained with significant changes to composition (e.g. folded essential oils). Both Brian Lawrence and myself are on record as disagreeing with ISO that dry-distilled essential oils (defined under section 3.3.5 above) are in fact essential oils at all - but apart from that the document seems eminently commendable.

If the NIRC are having further difficulties - they probably relate to deciding which are physical and which are chemical or physio-chemical processes. Unfortunately in many casers the individual materials
have to be considered in a case by case basis. For example, most aromatherapists now accept that the annual production volume of Sandalwood oil East Indian (Santalum album) is only a fraction of its former output, due to its threatened ecological status. Many have been using instead, selected fractions of solvent extracted Australian sandalwood (Santalum spicatum), which is often falsely marketed as an 'oil' (only one or two small suppliers actually steam distil the wood to generate the oil). I wouldn't say therefore that Australian sandalwood oil from S. spicatum is usually 'natural' from the definitions above.

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